House Project #9: Laundry Room, Phase 2

The laundry/pantry is a small room with big doors. The door to the back room stays open most of the time since we keep the food & water for the animals out there and access the back yard and garage. The pantry doors are regular interior doors and take up most of the space when they're open. In addition, they're stained wood, and work against the creamy orange walls to make the space feel gross. I painted the same doors that are on each of the bedrooms and the bathroom, but I've been trying to come up with a solution beyond just painting for these.

I swear the builders got these doors on special. . .
every room has one, and this room has three!!

DIY Planter Chairs - A quick and easy project

The idea for chairs repurposed as outdoor planters came across my pinterest feed back in March, and like most things I pin, this idea gathered dust for a while before I decided to commit to it.

In part because annuals are on sale at most places right now, and given that I have two sets of broken-seated chairs in my garage awaiting a new life, it seemed like the perfect crafternoon activity post-work on Monday.

I had originally planned to remove the broken caning from the seats and simply drop a couple of old hanging planter pots into the openings. . . easy enough, but where's the challenge and fun in that? Not to mention that once I got the pots out and surveyed the amount of plants I had brought home, I realized that there wouldn't be quite enough space in the pots for the plants to be happy enough.

Plants!

Thing 1 and Thing 2; both seats in disrepair!

New Yard Toy!

Vermont has this great web-based community board called Front Porch Forum, organized by town or region (I'm part of the Mad River Valley FPF), based on your street address. It's a pretty sweet free service - a community bulletin board for the digital age. I've scored a few things as well as sent other items to new homes, found a roommate, read about lost-then-found dogs, heard about - then attended - some cool free events, and learned tonight that someone got a kayak stolen from their yard (definitely not cool!). If you're in VT, and not on FPF, you're missing out, and frankly around here, it's more exciting than my facebook feed most days.

Why the excitement? This:

NEW WHEELBARROW!! 

A nearly-new, less than two year old wheelbarrow! For $35! From a really sweet older woman who needed to get a two-wheeled rig. I'm so dang excited. I know, I need a life, but seriously - no more dragging the big blue tarp around, or filling the blue recycling bin. Given how much needs raking from the yard and garden, I'm super excited to have scored this. Now I just need to find the time to get the yard work done. . .

Featured Post at New Dress A Day! And, a fun little wall-hanging

Almost famous!

Until this weekend I had pretty much forgotten that I'd submitted my summer sweatshirt re-size to Marisa over at new dress a day.

On Saturday I had an epic marathon day of parent conferences (28 in nine hours!), so needless to say I was feeling slightly overwhelmed and a bit beat by the time I got home around 5pm. Imagine my surprise and delight to open an email from Marisa saying that she had selected the sweatshirt re-size I had submitted to her in the summer to be featured on her blog on the 18th!

there I am!

Head on over and check it out, as well as her many other posts. Marisa started several years ago with a year of daily low-budget/no-budget dress transformations and now she's kind of a big deal. I'm excited and honored she picked my project. It's almost like I'm famous now, too.

Make-Something-Monday: T-shirt Necklaces

It's been a few months since my sister and I got together for make-something-monday. Okay, it's been since March, but we have thought about it! We finally made a plan for last night and opted for another t-shirt-based craft.  

tri-color t-shirt necklace

I pinned the t-shirt necklace awhile ago from this site, but there are a ton of blogs out there with the same/similar craft. We're not out to reinvent the wheel here folks, just share our version of things. This is fairly quick and easy, and requires little skill beyond cutting fabric. And your cut lines don't even need to be straight!

Furniture Facelift: Vintage Dresser

I scored this vintage dresser from the "indoor yard-sale" shop down on the main drag through town. I figured it would be more expensive, and drove by it several days before I decided to take the plunge. I anticipated needing to talk the guy down, but for $25, I decided it was a steal. And I lucked out - another person had looked at it earlier in the day but passed it over since she couldn't figure out how to get it home. Yet another reason I have a Subaru wagon - I can usually make things fit!

hello vintage dresser. welcome to your new home.

Sweatshirt Resize

I like to refer to the token sweatshirt from my undergrad days as the "$350 sweatshirt" because I received it after mailing in the $350 deposit to hold my spot when I decided to go to Clarkson. Of course they were indiscriminate in selecting the "welcome-to-college-thanks-for-the-first-of-a-lot-of-money-you-will-give-us" sweatshirt to send to me, and consequently it is a large . . . while I am not. Luckily, the late 90s were all about over-sized clothes, so in the grand scheme of things at the time the size was inconsequential. Not to mention that I was at an engineering school where dressing stylishly didn't feel all that crucial, except during job fairs (note to current students: sweatshirts are generally not acceptable job fair attire).

the 90s are alive in this sweatshirt

(almost) No-sew Braided T-shirt Collar Revisited

I've been meaning to revisit the "(almost) No-sew Braided T-shirt Collar" from March of last year.  I didn't have another shirt in my closet that I was interested in altering, so I have kept my eye out when hitting the thrift stores. When I was out a few weeks ago, I finally found a couple of inexpensive T's that I decided to try this again.

When we made these the first time, we both found that the neck felt a bit tight. So, I figured that starting with a deeper scooped neck would still give the braided look without as tight a feel. The T's I picked up each have a fairly scooped neck.

round 2 t-shirt
just a bit scoopy, and not really suitable for teaching in

Sky Blanket, Update. . .

loungin' on the couch

I really do love the sky blanket, but I've found over the past few months that it has spent more time decorating the back of the couch than on my lap.

It is the perfect lap size, and it is the right amount of warmth for one's lap. But it has not been happy to be just a lap blanket that mostly decorates the back of the couch. It certainly was not receiving the appropriate amount of love and attention it deserves (although it did get plenty of attention last year).

I did a quick measure of the dimensions while folded in half, and, of course, it is a funky size that does not exist in the world of regular pillows, or even pillow forms one can by from a craft store. Sigh. I figured I could find something that would work, or at the very least could buy fiberfill stuffing and go that route.

Make-Something-Monday: DIY "Sea glass" bottles

Update/Disclaimer: I have been getting a lot of views of this post, probably since folks think they might actually get instructions on how to make the very bright and pretty mason jars seen in the image going around the 'net. I never could get the original link to work, and I'm fairly certain that those jars were manufactured, not a D.I.Y. project. Correct me if I'm wrong, and enjoy our project!

A friend had pinned an image with a caption that claimed a how-to for making jars look like "sea glass" using Elmer's Glue and food coloring. As luck would have it, the link didn't work - the server (or whatever fancy website-blocking software) here at school blocked it. I should probably be thankful, since it very well could be a bogus, porn/virus-filled link, despite the really pretty jars. But if you've seen this pin, and the link works, let me know. Maybe it's legit (or possibly even too legit to quit).

 LEFT: the alleged "sea glass" jars        RIGHT: the "sea glass" jars we made

      circulating the world of Pinterest             after reading several how-to's



So I went to the Google and did a little search, and of course came up with a ton of hits. There are a lot of crafty blogs linking this idea. Most of the pics look less like "sea glass" - which I picture as being somewhat frosted in appearance - and more like colored/tinted glass. Creative nonetheless.

Make Something Monday: (almost) No-sew Braided T-shirt Collar

finished braid, with rouching effect!

I came across this fairly simple idea for updating/fancifying a t-shirt: creating a braid around the neck opening using the fabric of the shirt itself. Her inspiration came from a picture she'd seen on pinterest of a Banana Republic shirt with two rows of "braid" around the front of the collar.

G came over on Monday night with Odin to hang out so we decided this might be a low-key craft to do, and it seems to be follow our current theme of t-shirts.

Make Something Monday: T-shirt produce bags

. . . and other updates.

A while ago, my sister and I had decided to establish a weekly crafting routine on Monday nights (my last class ends by 5, and I have the evening free from dorm-parenting duties). This weekly crafting idea comes from my friend Nicole from ME, who has been holding "Too Cute Tuesdays" off and on over the past several years. She started after she moved off the island, so I never got to be a part of them. She and her crew have made a lot of cool things over the years that I keep meaning to try my hand at (the Fabric To Go boxes I made last spring came from a craft she had posted about). Winter being winter (and colds, and lack of planning) has kept us from actually starting up. Last night (yes, Tuesday), however, we decided to get the show on the road.

old t-shirts, mostly from G

Last week I'd stumbled across a t-shirt repurposing project: turn old t-shirts into produce (or other) bags with a seam or two and some snips through the fabric to give it some extra stretch. One take on the project is here, another take is here. We mostly followed the former example.

Calendar Craft



paper source wall art calendar

I have  a growing collection of calendars from past years that I've kept for the photography or artwork. I've had intentions of "doing something" with them - frame the photos, perhaps - although I've yet to make that happen. Not for lack of ideas or time, but perhaps motivation.

Enter the Paper Source Wall Art Calendar.  The genius folk over at Paper Source sell a calendar that not only has gorgeous, colorful silk screen images, but the back side of the each month is a template for making the artwork into one of a number of projects: gift box, gift box pillow, note cards, book mark, file folder. The pages are sturdy cardstock so will hold up well to being handled. Now there's no excuse NOT to do something with the pages right away - the instructions are right on the pages! I love built-in motivation! 

Crafting in July

I've been on a bit of a crafting hiatus (at least a pie-baking hiatus) since I was away for the start of my grad school program for three weeks, although I did manage to be a little bit crafty at grad camp (as we have affectionately dubbed it - it really did feel like camp most of the time!).

We were journaling almost every day, so I was drawing and sketching a lot.

Homemade Christmas

The family decided at some point this past year to do homemade christmas, and keep it lowkey. Most of us followed the rules, and most of us waited until the last minute. Mom still hasn't completely finished a few things, but we got to see the assorted makings of said gifts.

Several of the things I made were requests or suggestions, and a few I had to come up with because the recipients were being most unhelpful ("I have no ideas. I just want to get rid of stuff"). I didn't wait until the last minute to get started, but I was definitely finishing at nearly the last mintute.

Without further ado, here are 2010's homemade christmas gifts.